This is probably no surprise, given the lack of more regular employment generation in the countryside following from the more general decline in per capita public spending on the rural areas. This has naturally led to a drying up of regular employment opportunities, and the reduced multiplier effects of this decline also would have had an effect. But it is also not surprising given the lower rate of aggregate employment generation in the countryside, since periods of excess supply in labour markets are typically associated with worse conditions for the workers, in terms of less secure or regular contracts at the very least.
 
Chart 4c and 4d give the related patterns for urban men and women workers. Here the pattern is much more mixed. For men, there is only a very slight increase in casual contracts. For women workers, in fact there is a substantial increase in regular work, although this increase is greater when all workers (principal and subsidiary status) are taken together, rather than for principal status alone. This suggests that at least some of the increase may be a reflection of regular but secondary work undertaken by women to supplement household income, for example through manufacturing activities on a putting out basis at home, or part time service activities.
Chart 4c>> Chart 4d>>
 
However, the chart on urban women's employment pattern should not be taken as definitive simply because the data (which are reported as given in the NSSO report) for the year 1993-94 appear to be inaccurate since they do not total to 100. Assuming that the other years' figures are correct, there appears to be an increase in the share of regular employment and a decline in casual labour, thus reversing the trend of the earlier decades.
 
One of the much discussed features of rural employment generation over the 1980s was the diversification of employment away from agriculture and primary activities generally, towards secondary and service sector employment. In general this was seen to be a very positive feature, especially as it was accompanied by overall growth of rural employment in most regions of the country and was also associated with a trend decline in the incidence of rural poverty.
 
In this context, the latest evidence suggests that the move away from primary sector work has become even more marked in the late 1990s, after a period in which such diversification appeared to have reversed between 1987-88 and 1993-94. Thus, Charts 5a and 5b show that primary sector employment has declined for both men and women in the rural areas by 1999-2000, and that the decline has been especially sharp in the case of men, for whom tertiary sector employment has increased its share significantly.
Chart 5a >> Chart 5b >> Chart 5c >> Chart 5d >>
 
On the face of it, this should be a welcome tendency, suggesting that dependence on agriculture is decreasing and that the rural economy is experiencing much-needed diversification of employment opportunities. However, this latest pattern needs to be viewed in conjunction with the evidence on falling work participation rates and decelerating employment generation, as presented in Charts 1,2 and 3.
 
With this background, it becomes less obvious that the decline in primary sector share of employment is unambiguously positive. It may reflect the fact that the employment intensity of agricultural production is falling quite sharply especially with the new crops that are being introduced, thus leading to reduced growth of demand for agricultural labour. In such a case the service sector may effectively become a residual sector, in which there is underemployment occasioned by the fact that rural workers are forced to take up some occupation, however low the returns.
 
If the service sector were indeed a source of substantial rural dynamism, pulling labour in from other sectors, then the likelihood is that there would not have been such a decline in the rates of growth of overall employment. But instead, there is actually a decline in overall work participation rates in rural areas. This suggests that the observed shift in shares is simply a result of the fact that the deceleration of employment growth has been even sharper for agriculture than it has been for non-agricultural rural activities.